Blithewold was purchased as a country place in 1894 by Augustus and Bessie Van Wickle. Augustus was a coal magnate from and Pennsylvania. Bessie came from a family that made its fortune in the coal business as well; her father, Ario Pardee founded Hazleton, Pennsylvania, as a coal mining town and was one of the wealthiest men in America at the time.

 

Augustus and Bessie had two daughters, Marjorie and Augustine, though sadly Augustus died in a skeet shooting accident five months before Augustine was born. Three years later, Bessie married William McKee, a good friend of her late husband and a leather shoe manufacturer based in Boston. They established a winter residence in Boston, and summered at Blithewold.

 

Blithewold chronicles the remarkable lives of two generations of a prominent yet socially unpretentious American family. They were a very patriotic family. Two of Bessie’s brothers fought for the Union in the Civil War, one of them becoming a Brigadier General. In WWI the whole extended family served in different capacities. Marjorie’s husband George Lyon fought in France as a Captain, and eight more members of the next generation of the Pardee and Van Wickle families served their country at home and abroad. Marjorie worked tirelessly for the Red Cross, while Bessie and her companion Estelle Clements knit warm socks, scarves and hats for the servicemen.

 

Click on the Learn More button below to hear more about the family, the estate, and the fire that destroyed the original house.